If Tesco sold bottles of Conductive Education...

Firstly i apologise for the lack of blogs in the past few months - no good excuse really but i resolve to do better from now on!

a while ago a young adult with whom i work wrote a speech for a fundraising event and i absolutely loved his speech so feel that i'd like to share it with you.

From the horses mouth as it were....

"If Tesco sold bottles of Conductive Education I would be having them as part of my weekly shop as it provides a lifeline for anybody that has a physical or learning disability. Why? I will tell you why. My experiences of conductive education at Rainbow House has taught me and others like me, how to use our bodies and minds to overcome and conquer certain fears and challenges that have been previously huge barriers to us living our lives.

For example, when I started Conductive Education, my body felt useless, my confidence was at rock bottom and my mind was plauged with negative thoughts on how i would live my life independently. Conductive Education has helped me to control my body in times of stress and has boosted my life skills as well as my confidence in myself and in my abilities to overcome the negative thoughts created by how some people in this world see me. In my view, it is the most common sense, theraputic approach that i have come across.

I believe because of the hard work and training the Rainbow House team have done with me over the past three and a half years, my life has changed so much for the better as I am able to achieve so much more than I or others previously thought possible......without Rainbow House's support I would not have the confidence to live independently and of course would not be sitting here in front of you delivering this speech tonight...."

Thanks Jonathan!

Post Brain-Injury Counsellor

I was in the car on the way home last night, and as i sometimes do, switched over to radio 4. The programme was called Case Notes and was about how to help people rebuild their lives after a head injury.

The link is below if you're interested:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006th1n

As often on the radio i'd have loved to be able to see what they were doing as well as hearing it.

The most interesting aspect of the programme i found was that they spoke to a post-brain injury counsellor. I see this as a valuable role and it sounded like this was a new idea not a wide-spread service. But why have NONE of the families i work with (to my knowledge) been offerred post-trauma couselling when they found out they had a disabled person in their family?

The only such service i have heard of is for children (and siblings) when they are a little older to support them as they come to terms with being disabled. I have heard of this service but after a referral for a child a year ago they still have not had any input from the service.

No wonder then that we so often end up being a sort of counsellor to our parents, grandparents, children, teenagers, young adults, spouses, aunties, uncles, siblings etc... I do enjoy this part of my job - although it can be very difficult - but it is often late in the process before we even meet our children and this programme, once again, made me wonder why they have never had this support before?

I am impressed that the NHS is providing this support to people who have experienced brain injury and their families... but there is still a massive gap in this service for most of our service users.